In farewell, Burris laments lack of blacks in Senate

WASHINGTON--As his controversial tenure nears its end, Sen. Roland Burris gave a farewell address Thursday lamenting there will be no blacks at all in the next Senate.

"This is simply unacceptable," he said. "We can and we will and we must - do better."

He also noted that only six blacks have served in the Senate in the body's 221-year history.

The Illinois Democrat was appointed at the end of 2008 by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was accused of trying to sell the seat.

Burris, now 73, accepted the seat that had been Barack Obama's. Obama's election to the White House left two years remaining in the term.

Arriving in January 2009, Burris at first was turned away by the Senate, but his credentials later were found in order.

Almost precisely a year ago, he was admonished by a Senate ethics panel for giving "inconsistent, incomplete, and misleading" statements about the circumstances of his appointment. Blagojevich later was convicted on one felony count and is awaiting a retrial on 23 others.

Burris, giving an elaborate, 25-minute goodbye on the Senate floor, said that he stood in the chamber as the great-grandson of a man who was born into slavery "in an era when this Senate debated whether he and others like him were worthy of freedom, and equal treatment under the law."

He said his rise to the Senate in some ways was a "remarkable testament to our nation's ability to correct the wrongs of generations past. To move always towards that 'more perfect Union.' "

But he said his presence, as the only black American senator "in a country as progressive and diverse as any on the planet," also was a "solemn reminder of how far we still yet have to go."

He said he could count "on the fingers of a single hand" the black senators who preceded him: Blanche Kelso Bruce and Hiram Revels of Mississippi, Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, and Carol Moseley Braun and Obama of Burris' home state of Illinois.

"This is troubling in its own right," he said of the short list. Burris then noted that in the next Senate there will be no blacks at all.

Burris is expected to serve until Nov. 29 until Rep. Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican, is sworn in to replace him. Kirk will assume a full, six-year term beginning in January.

A native of Centralia, Burris was the first African-American elected statewide in Illinois when,

in 1978, he won the job of comptroller. He later served as Illinois attorney general, but lost

several other bids for office, including for the Senate, governor and Chicago mayor.

Today, highlighting a long list of his accomplishments in the Senate, including among them the passage of health care reform, Burris joked that he may return to the Senate to vote to let gays and lesbians serve openly in the military.